In her final days, a reclusive artist races to finish a children’s story about a girl who meets her mother’s ghost. Years after her death, two filmmakers uncover secrets in the writer's incomplete work about a mysterious loss that haunted her past.
The belongings of Jacqueline, a reclusive artist who created in anonymity, sit in a storage locker for seven years after her death. MOTHER'S DAY peels back the layers of her life through intimate vérité footage and personal archives, leading to the diaries of Fanny Burney, an 18th-century writer who, like Jacqueline, lost her mother as a young girl. Across centuries, the film traces the fragile thread that binds them, and how inspiration ripples quietly across generations, passing from one artist to the next.
Part investigation, part dreamlike reverie, we witness Jacqueline shortly before her death, as she struggles to finish a children’s story about a girl who meets the ghost of her mother. These scenes are interwoven with haunting, old VHS footage of Jacqueline in an acting workshop, roleplaying a character who lost her mother. Meanwhile we, the two filmmakers in the present, empty the storage locker.
As the locker empties, timelines collapse, and we find ourselves in Jacqueline’s acting workshop from decades ago. There, we speak with her one last time. We tell her what we have learned since her death: inspiration does not end but moves, from Fanny, to her, to us.
Luis De Filippis is a Canadian Italian filmmaker. She learned the craft of storytelling as a child while listening to her Bisnonna, Nonnas, and Zias gossip and tell stories of the past. Her films include the short For Nonna Anna (2017), which received a Sundance Special Jury Prize, and her debut feature, Something You Said Last Night (2022), which played at festivals around the world where it received prizes including: the TIFF Change Maker Award, the Sebastiáne Award at the San Sebastián Film Festival, and the Rotterdam Youth Jury Award. De Filippis is an alum of the TIFF Talent Lab and Writer’s Studio, Berlinale Talents, and CHANEL writing fellowship.
